Octuplets' Grandmother: My Daughter Was Obsessed With Having Children

The mother of six who gave birth to octuplets in California this week just wanted "one more girl" and was obsessed with having children, her mother said.

Nadya Suleman, 33, conceived all 14 of her babies through in vitro fertilization, her mother told The Associated Press. She isn't married and has been fixated on being a mother since she was a teenager, Angela Suleman said.

Last year, Nadya Suleman decided to have more embryos implanted, hoping to have "just one more girl," her mother told The Los Angeles Times.

She said she wasn't supportive of her daughter's decision to try to get pregnant again.

"It can't go on any longer," the grandmother told the AP. "She's got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn't want to get married."

It wasn't clear whether the octuplets mother was ever married. Angela Suleman told the Times that her daughter is divorced but the ex-husband isn't the babies' father.

Nadya Suleman gave birth Monday in Bellflower. She was expected to remain in the hospital for at least a few more days, and her newborns for at least a month.

A spokeswoman at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center said the babies were doing well and seven were breathing unassisted.

While her daughter recovers, Angela Suleman is taking care of the other six children, ages 2 through 7, at the family home in Whittier, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

She said she warned her daughter, "I'm going to be gone" when she gets home from the hospital.

Reports Friday cast Nadya Suleman in an unflattering light. CBS News reported that the single mother filed for bankruptcy and abandoned her home less than two years ago.

The elder Suleman told the Times her daughter "is not evil, but she is obsessed with children. She loves children, she is very good with children, but obviously she overdid herself."

She said all her grandchildren were conceived using the same sperm donor, according to the Times, but she declined to identify him.

Angela Suleman said her daughter always had trouble conceiving and underwent in vitro fertilization treatments because her fallopian tubes are "plugged up."

There were frozen embryos left over after her previous pregnancies and her daughter didn't want them destroyed, so she decided to have more children.

Her mother and doctors have said the woman was told she had the option to abort some of the embryos and, later, the fetuses. She declined.

Her mother said she does not believe her daughter will have any more children.

"She doesn't have any more (frozen embryos), so it's over now," she said. "It has to be."

Nadya Suleman wanted to have children since she was a teenager, "but luckily she couldn't," her mother said.

"Instead of becoming a kindergarten teacher or something, she started having them, but not the normal way," he mother said.

Her daughter's obsession with children caused Angela Suleman considerable stress, so she sought help from a psychologist, who told her to order her daughter out of the house.

"Maybe she wouldn't have had so many kids then, but she is a grown woman," Angela Suleman said. "I feel responsible and I didn't want to throw her out."

Yolanda Garcia, 49, of Whittier, said she helped care for Nadya Suleman's autistic son three years ago.

"From what I could tell back then, she was pretty happy with herself, saying she liked having kids and she wanted 12 kids in all," Garcia told the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

"She told me that all of her kids were through in vitro, and I said 'Gosh, how can you afford that and go to school at the same time?"' she added. "And she said it's because she got paid for it."

Garcia said she did not ask for details.

Nadya Suleman holds a 2006 degree in child and adolescent development from California State University, Fullerton, and as late as last spring she was studying for a master's degree in counseling, college spokeswoman Paula Selleck told the Press-Telegram.

Her fertility doctor has not been identified. Her mother told the Los Angeles Times all the children came from the same sperm donor but she declined to identify him.

Birth certificates reviewed by The Associated Press identify a David Solomon as the father for the four oldest children. Certificates for the other children were not immediately available.

The news that the octuplets' mother already had six children sparked an ethical debate in the reproductive medicine field and lively Internet conversations.

Some medical experts were disturbed to hear that the woman was offered fertility treatment, and troubled by the possibility that she was implanted with so many embryos.

Others worried that the mother would be overwhelmed trying to raise her brood and would end up relying on public support.

The eight babies — six boys and two girls — were delivered by Caesarean section weighing between 1 pound, 8 ounces and 3 pounds, 4 ounces. Forty-six physicians and staff assisted in the deliveries.